Areas of Experience

Sheldon Gnatt is an experienced workplace ombuds and mediator who has been recognized and awarded for his excellence in this work.  Sheldon began working as a full-time workplace ombuds and mediator in 2018 at the National Security Agency after a thirty-six-year career as an attorney concentrating in employment law.  He retired from NSA in 2023 and returned to NSA as a rehired annuitant and continued to do ombuds and mediation work on a part-time basis from 2023-2025, when the rehired annuitant program was discontinued.   Since then, he has offered those services as a contractor.

While at NSA, Sheldon was commended for his calmness, patience, listening skills and insight as he helped employees discuss their conflict situation and explore options of how to proceed to resolve the conflict, often providing conflict coaching.  Sheldon also coordinated providing Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) services to resolve workplace relationship conflict and to resolve cases in which the employee had entered a formal process (EEO or Grievance), and served as the mediator in those types of cases.  Sheldon also presented conflict skills workshops to hundreds of Agency employees and trained and mentored other Agency Ombuds and Mediators.

Immediately prior to becoming an Ombuds, from 2012-2018, Sheldon was a full-time Federal sector EEO litigator in NSA’s Office of General Counsel, serving as Lead attorney for defense litigation of EEO claims before the EEOC.  Prior to coming to NSA, in his thirty years in private law practice, Sheldon represented both employees and employers in both the private and public/government sectors.  Sheldon was named in a survey of peers as a Baltimore/Washington, D. C. area “Super Lawyer” in the field of Employment Litigation Defense in 2007.

Sheldon is trained and certified in Mediation by the Center for Alternative Dispute Resolution; the Justice Center of Atlanta (Basic and Advanced Mediation Skills) and the Mediation Training Institute at Eckerd College, from which he also holds certificates in the use of the Conflict Dynamics Profile and Trainer in Workplace Conflict Resolution.  He also completed a 5-part Coaching course from the Co-Active Training Institute/CRR Global) and the ORS @ Work course from Organization and Relationship Systems Coaching (ORSC) (CRR Global).  Sheldon holds a B.A. from the University of Maryland and J.D. from The Catholic University of America/Columbus School of Law.